She stared at the plant that sat before her, its green leaves drooping. She’d killed it. She’d gone and killed it. In her willingness and enthusiasm to give it life, she’d given it too much water and now there it lay, gripped by the throes of death and shuddering its final breaths. Why was she so incapable of raising a plant? Of sustaining life? The very semblance of control she may have gained, the control she could have held tangibly within her hands, and felt within her being lay desolate. She had nothing, she could do nothing, she’d gone and killed a plant and the proof of her helplessness and ineptitude lay before her, stark.
It's funny how when you have so little in life, so few rooms to your castle, you desperately grasp at anything you may gain for yourself. It’s also funny how at other moments you resign yourself to your fate in a quiet manner, stifling and suppressing all that is within you to maintain a quasi-peace.
A car pulls into the driveway, while you sit on the living room couch attempting to detangle the hopelessly tangled Christmas lights that lay in your lap. Your husband enters the house, bearing the purchases aloft in his hand that you so fervently advised him against. They occupy an elevated position, their heaviness and rustling in their white plastic bag occupying all but a single percent of the volume of the room.
You tell him of your plant, and the emotions you feel weigh heavy in your words like golden syrup. Your throat feels like it’s clogged with thick, viscous syrup – to take a breath is difficult.
He smiles.
‘That’s gotta be a world record for killing a plant, right?’
‘We must call Guinness World Records!’
